Frequently Asked Questions

This option controls whether and how often VPN Tracker sends keep-alive pings. A keep-alive ping is not a normal ping, and is not considered tunnel traffic by the VPN gateway, so it does not keep the connection alive at the gateway. The sole purpose of these pings is to keep the connection alive through firewalls and NAT routers between VPN Tracker and the gateway when no other tunnel traffic is being sent.

This option controls if and after how long VPN Tracker will disconnect due to inactivity. Only tunnel traffic is considered activity, keep-alive pings sent from either side and protocol management traffic are not considered tunnel traffic.

This option controls if and after what time VPN Tracker will disconnect due to no sign of life. Any traffic from the gateway is considered a sign of life, regardless of whether it is tunnel traffic, keep alive ping, or protocol management traffic.

This option has no effect if the gateway is not configured to send pings (--ping option or ping in the server configuration file), because without pings enabled, there may be no tunnel or management traffic for quite some time, but this is not proof that the gateway is no longer alive, since it won't send anything if there is nothing to send. With ping enabled, the gateway would at least send keep-alive pings in such a situation, and if those don't arrive either, the gateway has most likely dropped the connection or gone offline.